Gertie Cleary compared the experience to a child with a splinter. "[W]hen you pull a splinter out, they holler and screech and pull their hand away," she told CTV News.

The young raven fledgling who visited Cleary's Nova Scotia home last month had just borne the brunt of a porcupine attack, and was clearly reaching out to Cleary for help in extracting the painful quills that were attached to its face.